“Human waste is filled with nutrients from the food we eat, nutrients that were taken from the soil as the food was grown and harvested, and the same nutrients that are essential for restoring soil productivity post-harvest,” explains Sasha Kramer, director of Haiti-based not-for-profit Soil, an initiative that transforms human waste into resources.

The challenge for the development sector is recognising human waste’s economic value to improve food security and building a business case to support it in under-resourced communities.
Identifying the challenges

Kramer explains that the primary obstacle to this potentially win-win situation is health concerns. Any bacteria that pose a danger to humans need to be eliminated from the waste during the treatment process. “When human waste composting is carried out at the household level it becomes more difficult,” she says.

The other obstacle is overcoming end-users’ fears over, or objections to, the reuse of faecal matter. NGOs could play a key role in getting communities to discuss the taboo subject and educating them on the potential of poo power.

“Given this natural aversion to human waste, it takes rigorous research, careful implementation and skillful social marketing to overcome the ‘yuck’ factor,” says Kramer. “That said, we found that, in Haiti, once people are able to see, smell and touch the final product they are more than eager to test it in their gardens.”

The organisation treats 240,000 US gallons of waste every year and has sold 75,000 US gallons of compost, Kramer says. It’s been bought by nurseries, backyard gardeners and large-scale agricultural projects run by non-profits to improve reforestation and soil quality. Kramer says human waste-based compost can bring “huge economic returns for farmers growing high-value crops, such as spinach and peppers”.
Feeding the food chain

Sanergy, an organisation that focuses on improving sanitation in urban slums in Nairobi, is working with agricultural start-up AgriProtein to recycle human faeces into animal feed via insects. Since 2010, AgriProtein has been working on developing technology that sees insects fed on streams of biowaste, including slaughterhouse waste, and then processed into flakes which can be fed to pigs and sheep. According to Teun Veldkamp, a senior researcher at the Centre for Animal Nutrition at Wageningen University, insects are ideal because they can feed on any biowaste.

The collaboration, known as the BioCycle, is still in its infancy. Tests are ongoing to to ensure that any feed produced from insects that have been fed on faecal waste is fit for human consumption further down food chain. Once the tests have been completed, the focus will be on how to turn into a sustainable business that can help locals to make money and improve community sanitation.

The BioCycle’s programme manager, Marc Lewis, says local NGOs could help to roll out the technology into rural communities. “NGOs can provide the training around small-scale fly rearing practices,” says Lewis. “This will help farmers to better utilise waste for the benefit of animal rearing.”

By building their capacity to provide support to smallholders, NGOs can help communities avoid the potential health problems of composting at home without any safeguards. They can also provide smallholders with market opportunities they might not otherwise have access to.
Creating a business model

Another initiative to recycle human waste is Peepoople. It’s built around the Peepoo bag, a personal, single-use, self-sanitising, fully biodegradable toilet that can be used in post-disaster situations and others where no other sanitation is available. It has a strong business model: local women can become micro-entrepreneurs by selling bags; customers receive a monetary incentive for each bag that is returned after use and the human waste collected is turned into a sanitised solution that is sold to farmers as a cheap fertiliser.

Peepoople is also developing is a piece of machinery that will help farmers spread fertiliser – traditional methods involve spreading it by hand which is a barrier to acceptance of using human-waste compost.

“Normally, faecal waste is just a very difficult waste, but properly used, it becomes an asset,” says founder Anders Wilhelmson. “You get rid of a problem and gain a possibility.”

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About Me

I am a development manager by training and have been working with Civil society for close to 20 years, including being the Regional Coordinator for the Lake Victoria Environment Management Project (LVEMPII) Civil Society Watch Project (Nov. 2012 - May 2015) of the East African Sustainability Watch Network. I have followed the process of development and eventual adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and feel that I can contribute to tracking progress of this framework by regularly highlighting field level experiences and perspectives from the Global South (especially Africa).